6 Myths About Famous Places You Believe (Thanks to Movies)

Even if you've never left your hometown, you have a mental picture of virtually every famous city in the world. That's what movies are for, right? You'll never go to Moscow, but you know what you'll find there -- huge buildings with onion-shaped roofs and lots of snow.

Well, we're sorry to say that Hollywood really doesn't seem to do all that much homework on some of these locations. That's why you may come away thinking ...

#6. Washington, D.C., Has Skyscrapers

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America's capital turns up in everything from political thrillers to alien invasion movies, yet very few movies are actually shot there. Usually they'll nab a few shots of the U.S. Capitol and then head to New York City (or if they're on a budget, Toronto) and fill in the blanks. Why not? Every city pretty much looks the same, right?

This is why movies get so many little things wrong about D.C. -- people who actually live there can chuckle when The Invasion showcases the capital's many nonexistent newspaper stands, or when Live Free or Die Hard sticks in tollbooths, which the city actually has none of. But, like we said, those are little things. When you're trying to pass off another city as Washington, D.C., it's better to focus on the bigger giveaways, like maybe the freaking skyline.

That's a shot of D.C. in the newest Die Hard film. See that big building there? How tall do you think that is? We're guessing about 30 floors. And next to it is a building with about 15 floors.

The highest commercial building in D.C. is One Franklin Square, which reaches a whopping ... 12 stories.

In fact, the highest anything in D.C. is the Washington Monument, followed by the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is only 329 feet tall.

The ratio of skyscrapers to dinosaurs is exactly the same.

And yet in Live Free or Die Hard ...

This picture is riddled with inaccuracies.

And it's not like Die Hard is the only one. Check out the view from Nicole Kidman's office in The Invasion.

Or go ahead and try to watch Enemy of the State, where they pretty much just take D.C. and mash it together with Baltimore:

Shoot him before he produces that Karate Kid remake!

Oh, and remember that scene in True Lies where the terrorist jumps from one building to the next after a chase around Georgetown?

There is nothing remotely resembling this building anywhere in D.C. Possibly sensing that someone from D.C. might actually see the movie at some point, James Cameron brilliantly added a blurry superimposed backdrop of the nation's capital in front of the Los Angeles Westin Bonaventure Hotel:

Yes, this is from the same man who has several Academy Award nominations for visual effects.

#5. The Louvre Is a Dignified Resting Place for Masterpieces

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If you've never been to the Louvre in Paris, you can still easily picture it in your head: vast, silent, looking the same as it would if you were visiting in the 13th century. Nothing but ancient art ...

... and ornate columns with marble floors.

Those shots are from The Da Vinci Code, and you see that the only modern bit of architecture is the glass pyramid outside:

The crowds certainly don't take away from the structure itself. It's no wonder that when The Da Vinci Code was filmed there, the headlines didn't read that the movie was being shot in the Louvre -- they all read that the Louvre was allowing a movie to be shot there. It's a pretty big deal, and why wouldn't it be? The ornate, dignified building has so much history that when they proposed at the end of the film that the Holy Grail was hidden beneath the main entrance area, it actually seemed possible.

What the fuck? Yes, that's an Apple store. At the entrance to the Louvre. Why? Because the entrance to the Louvre -- the sacred tomb that houses the sacred twist ending to the most popular novel of the past decade -- is a fucking mall.

At Le Carrousel du Louvre, which translates roughly into "The Large Rotating Machine of the Louvre," you can get just about anything you want -- from jewelry to furniture to a freaking Hertz rental car.

At the time of the shoot, the filmmakers didn't have to cover up the presence of an Apple store because it didn't exist yet. However, the filmmakers did have to cover up a Resonance music store, along with an Esprit fashion store, a chocolate shop and a goddamn Virgin Megastore. Suddenly the ending to that film becomes a whole lot more depressing when you're picturing Mary Magdalene entombed under a food court.

"She rests at last beneath the McCafe ..."

#4. It's Always Winter in Moscow, and It's Always Sunny in Australia

Go ahead and try to think up a movie that takes place in Moscow that doesn't involve either a shitload of snow or cold, overcast skies that appear ready to dump a shitload of snow.

Makes you wonder how Mickey Rourke's character in Iron Man 2 got such a hard-core tan.

Now try to picture a movie set in Australia that doesn't show the vast, dry desert and blinding sun that you apparently find year-round everywhere in the country.

But it makes sense, right? Sure, Moscow must see the sun every now and then, but we've all seen GoldenEye. The whole goddamn country looks like this:

And the inhabited parts of Australia are pretty much the opposite:

The thing is, go ahead and switch those pictures around. What you're looking at in the second picture above is a beautiful summer day in Alexandrovsky Garden, which is right near the Kremlin in good ol' Moscow -- a city which, by the way, just broke its summer record with temperatures close to 100 degrees. In fact, it's pretty much on par with New York City as far as climate goes, though the figures are still out on the ratio of douchebags and misspelled graffiti per square block.

But the snow? That surely can't be Australia, can it?

The only thing missing is Crocodile Dundee making a snowman.

That's Canberra, Australia, which is just outside Sydney. And what you're seeing isn't all that unusual. In fact, Australia has something for everyone, from skiing ...

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... to tropical rain forests.

The only thing missing is Mel Gibson swinging on a vine. And threatening to kill his wife.

So why does Hollywood show only one major city surrounded by a freaking wasteland? To be fair, there is a whole lot of desert in Australia. Though hardly anyone actually lives there -- why would they? Imagine if every film that took place in America completely ignored the coasts. That's pretty much what Hollywood decided to do with Australia. All of the cities are on the coasts.

Take Kangaroo Jack, a film that completely revolutionized the "please kill me" genre. The heroes need to get to the town of Alice Springs, which is in Northern Territory, Australia -- pretty much in the dead center of the desert. They begin their journey by flying into Sydney and renting a jeep to start their adventure, because even though Sydney is more than a day's drive from Alice Springs, it is clearly the only international airport in Australia. After a drive through nothingness, they arrive at the city, only to find more nothingness:

It's so dry here that even the architecture can't grow.

Why would anyone actually live somewhere like that? The answer is, they wouldn't. Which is why Alice Springs actually looks like this:

Which admittedly looks like the fake neighborhood that exploded around Indiana Jones.